


Good For The Weekend

by gondorsfinest



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky and Caroline kind of cautiously co-adopt each other, Caroline's a sarcastic overprotective mess who mostly has no idea what's going on, Crack, Fluff, If I were into unnecessary het subplots I'd probably be in the industry and not on ao3, M/M, No we're not gonna hook up, Pre Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and during, bucky's gotta be protected and have his hair braided and shit, for now it's just recovery and bad episodes and good episodes, shameless self insert, there will be bucky/steve content later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-06-06 12:56:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6754753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gondorsfinest/pseuds/gondorsfinest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>19-year old Caroline is 100 lbs of swearwords and stubbornness, and seems much more stressed about her rebelling washing machine than about the metal-armed man in her house pointing a gun at her. Her chaotic blonde hair reminds him of something, so he won’t kill her until he knows what it is. </p><p>"He could just take one step forward and she would shoot him in self-defense. It would be easy. They’d find him with two loaded guns and ammunition, in a house he shouldn’t be in, shot by a shivering young girl who luckily happens to have just enough experience with firearms to defend herself. Then again… She speaks in the exact radio frequency to be heard in that forgotten corner behind his left lung, just above his stomach, the part where it hurts when she curses or walks or falls to the ground after the slightest injury. There was someone. He is certain of that now. There was someone who did some of the things she does, and didn’t do a lot of other things that she does, but when those two people align, he feels the closest to an innocent man that he has felt in years."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Peppermint

**Author's Note:**

> Long-time writer, first-time poster. You probably don't give much of a damn about my OC, but please come cry about Bucky with me! I know you'd also love to kiss his hair and make him chocolate cupcakes.
> 
> Title is taken from Taylor Swift's Blank Space.

It happens after a mission in the heart of New York. Nothing complicated really. One gunshot and the target is spilling his blood on the marble tiles of his own hallway. From what he can tell, this neighborhood seems to be wealthy compared to other parts of the town. Not exactly rich, but just enough to satisfy him. It’s always more satisfying to kill powerful people. He doesn’t know why, it just is.

Opening and closing his metal fist absent-mindedly, he steps outside and shuts the door as quietly as possible. The neighbors should all be asleep, but one last round to check for surprise witnesses sure can’t hurt. If he doesn’t do it and it turns out there was a witness, it  _will_  hurt. Quite literally.

 _Three, two, one, go._  He reloads his gun. The windows are splendid dark graves, as they were before he carried out his mission. Except for one, straight across from the target’s house. It’s a ground floor window, probably either the kitchen or part of the living room.

As he steps closer, he can peer inside through the neatly trimmed box hedge, cowering down in case somebody’s near the window. Nobody to be seen. Could be timed for all he knows. Apparently this is a thing now, people programming lamps so it looks like they’re home while they’re not. He vaguely recalls that one of the houses is always empty because the family left the country for a few years. Which house was it again? Was it this one, 117A? Did the briefing say anything about timed lights?

Remembering details from his briefings isn’t easy. Thank god his missions are.

They’re always the same. Bury evidence, bring evidence, eliminate targets, (and witnesses, if necessary). The less he knows, the better. The one difference there is from time to time is when he needs to take someone alive. But that’s one variable, and he needs to remember it only for a single day.

Look left. Look right. Look left. Still nobody in the street. He walks slowly towards the front door, upright, shoulders heaving. The door is closed, but not locked. Somebody must be home after all.

 _Three, two, one, go._  The door swings open without a sound, but there is noise coming from somewhere at the back of the house. A distraction? He stops, tightens his grip around the gun. Observe. Identify. Override.

The noise is a high-pitched whirring, almost like a car in overdrive. An occasional clicking noise. It’s vaguely familiar. He can’t quite put his finger on what it is, but his temples ache all of a sudden. Low breaths. He is too loud, but he cannot stop. What is this noise? Where has he heard it before? He tightens his grip around the gun. Doesn’t matter, does it? Not his priority.

_Three, two –_

Crack.

When he looks down on his metal grip, he notices that he has bent the barrel of his rifle. Within seconds, it is exchanged for an smaller handgun previously hanging on his left hip.  _Three, two, one, go._  He must decide if he focuses the light or the noise first. There is no light coming from the back of the house and if there’s anyone awake at this hour who is not aware of his presence and not actively trying to mislead him, they’ll probably be where the light is. All sorts of machines make noises, and he can still take care of it later.

Just as he decides to go towards the kitchen, another noise comes forth among the whirring and clicking. The shrieking of a teakettle. He peers into the kitchen, aiming back and forth from each corner. There’s a space he cannot see from the hallway, behind the fridge, from where the teakettle’s steam is pouring into the kitchen. Well, he will need to readjust his position.

Slowly, he straightens up and walks into the kitchen step by step, his handgun aimed and ready to fire. And there she is, finally, with her back turned to him, fidgeting with her phone, anxiously swaying back and forth from her toes to her heels contrariwise. Is she calling the police already? No, she isn’t speaking. She isn’t typing or dialing. Just reading and scrolling and shaking her head and kissing her teeth nervously.

His finger is on the trigger when she murmurs something under her breath, loud enough for him to hear but hushed enough for him to understand she doesn’t mean him. “Oh come on, you jerk.”

And that word, for some reason, hits him like a freight train. He’s been called much worse, he hears things like “crazy sonuvabitch” from his targets as much as he hears pleading, but that syllable rams a shot of dizziness into his veins and the syrup has reached his hands before he can do anything about it. It’s just a moment of his muscle memory disobeying him, but it’s enough to send his gun rattling to the floor.

She immediately drops her phone and whirls around. He estimates the potential witness is somewhere between one hundred and one hundred and twenty pounds. Not taller than five feet seven, thin frame, thin arms, typical frail teen girl. Even if he weren’t armed, this would not be a hard fight at all.

He’s fidgeting for his gun on the floor, making sure the safety catch is unlocked and aims it at her again. She’s staring at him, staring at her phone on the floor, staring at his gun. Her blonde hair dangles in a messy bun from the back of her head.  _Three, two, one…_

Eyebrows that are drawn together, strained, scared, defiant. There’s a bright red scratch on her forearm, and her legs under her pajama shorts are faintly blue and green around the knees and covered in small red spots around her calves and flanks.  _Three, two..._

She said ‘jerk’, she called someone a jerk, presumably her phone or someone who she read about on her phone or someone who wrote something to her on her phone... And he… For some reason, he…

 _Three, two, one, go._  He finishes the countdown. He has the control over his body back. But he doesn’t shoot her. She clears her throat, waiting, pushing her left foot under her right, shivering. He can’t speak.

“Um,” she mutters finally. “Do I … gotta… do anyth–… Do you want… information? Or something?” And in a desperate attempt of gallow’s humor she adds, “If you want tea, you can just ask.”

He uncocks his handgun, walks over and picks up her phone. She’s scattering back immediately, biting her lip as if holding back protest. He looks down at the screen which is miraculously intact. Some household appliance online manual, but the site’s design is askew. Bad reception. If she had truly seen or heard anything, she’d have bigger concerns than this. So he hands it back to her. She is completely dumbfounded.

“Thanks… Uh, I, uhm –“

He abruptly strikes her on the temple with the gun’s handle, and immediately she collapses onto the floor. Like he said. Frail teenage girl, nothing more. A few hours of sleep is all that could happen to her that way. She might not even remember him when she wakes up.

For a few moments, he stares at her. Then he turns off the light and ignores the washing machine as he walks back out.

When he reports back, he declares to have encountered no witnesses and a timed light mechanism in 117A. They’re content. They’re always content with an unproblematic mission and a quick fulfillment of his obligations.

Nobody fusses about the gun. But he can’t stop thinking about it. He’s returned with many broken guns, but never one he broke himself.

*

The floor heating is on when she wakes up, that’s not the problem. The problem is she’s had kind of a rough day. Two hours of driving back to New York from her dorm turned into almost four because of heavy traffic, her pizza delivery took ages to arrive and when she had finally eaten at half past one in the morning, her washing mashine decided to strike. And then of course, she just got knocked out. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. What time is it even? She turns over her phone that lies a few inches away from her and presses the power button. 7:12 am. That makes sense. There’s already morning light in the kitchen.

Slowly, she sits up and attempts to move her limbs. Everything hurts, but nothing appears to be broken. She has some large bruises all over her arms and shoulders, but she didn’t rip her favorite Star Wars shorts or fracture her skull. That’s good enough.

Groaning and rubbing her forearms, she drags herself to the door and locks it. The alarm system beeps a comforting ‘switched on’. Who is stupid enough to leave the door unlocked in New York City, regardless of whether you had a hard day?  _Yeah, me. Rhetorical question. Next one, please._  Is anything missing? The TV is still there, and the stereo as well. She walks upstairs to her mother’s bedroom. The jewelry seems to be complete, but really, how would she know? The safe is untouched. Computer – check. Dad’s files – check? She puts a check of good faith, because again, she’s not even sure her father knows what’s in all those damn binders.

What else do people steal when they break into houses? Was he even after anything material? He threatened to shoot her, that much is obvious, he did aim a gun at her... And what the fuck was that even about? Why would anyone aim a gun at her? She’s a boring nineteen year old, for God’s sake. What has she done wrong? Well, left her door unlocked, but … wrong enough to make an assassin or whatever he was appear in her kitchen? The surrealism of this situation is the only thing that keeps her calm and that kept her calm last night.  _I'm dreaming. This cannot be happening to me. This is not the fucking Godfather._

She skips back into the hallway and makes out muddy footprints on the wood. They lead from outside into the kitchen. And probably back… she’s not too good at distinguishing this. But nowhere else. Unless he took his shoes off, he went the same way he came, right after he knocked her unconscious.

She picks her phone back up. Her mother knows she came back late tonight, so she won’t expect any messages for a while. She has time to decide if she should call the police or not. But if nothing’s missing, and the intruder didn’t want to shoot her, why would she? What would she even report?  _Yeah, hi, is this 911? I left the front door unlocked last night… and I asked that burglar if he wanted tea but he didn’t answer, could you track him down and tell him that was rude?_

No. That’s bullshit. Her parents would kill her, and she just survived a situation that could have been fatal. Don’t need two of these within 24 hours. He did have a gun, and a rifle on his back that was longer than her arm, but he left. Obviously he realized he was in the wrong house. Or that he really needed to get a job other than contract killer. Either way, he spared her. And if he’s neither after her life nor after her parents’ stuff, then why would she report anything? She really doesn’t want to get in trouble about the unlocked door…

It's a stupid decision, and she knows it, but it’s  _her_  stupid decision to make, and she can reverse it any time. If she feels unsafe from now on until tonight, she will call the police. If nothing happens and she feels alright, she won’t. Or she’ll put it off and claim she was hiding in the pantry all day, afraid he might come back and not daring to pick up the phone.

She fixes the washing machine and gets two loads through before noon.

When she goes out to eat lunch, she walks back twice to make sure she  _did_  , in fact, lock the door. (She did. Both times.) Her friend asks her about the bruise on her jaw. Caroline replies she hit herself in the face with her closet door by accident. That has happened before, and her friend (who back then received a dramatic selfie with a fight club caption) just rolls her eyes amicably.

*

The girl does not appear in the press that morning, neither as dead nor as a witness in his target’s discovery. He’d be in trouble if she did, and he’s left alone, so she kept her mouth shut. Why?

As soon as he is brought to his cell, he walks back to her house in his mind, and his spirit sits on her porch until a few hours later when they come to take him. It is noon now, barely ten hours after he left her, and he can almost feel the porch railing pressing into his back from where he leaned against it.

He gets a new gun. He gets a new assignment.

It turns out easy again, but they don’t need to know that.

*

When she arrives home, she sets up her laptop at the kitchen table, where she usually has good WiFi, and makes herself some tea. Hannibal is always worth a rewatch and she does still feel safe in her own house, so there’s no calls to be made. Two episodes later, she looks outside into the garden and sees the man from last night sitting on her porch, looking up through the kitchen window.

Deep down, she isn’t at all surprised to see him again.

The large rifle is hanging on his back again, and his eyes are still smeared with something black. Could be grime or grease – or makeup, who the hell is she to pass judgement on grown-ass male contract killers. But his mask is gone, and she can see his mouth, nose and chin. Really not much of an improvement, since they’re expressionless, but it feels strangely... she can’t find the right word for it. Intimate is the most accurate one she can think of.

He could just shoot his way in – if he wanted to. But he sits there and looks up at her, frowning as if he is searching for something in her face. She feels like making a funny grimace, but she probably shouldn’t provoke him.

After all, he came back, and that isn’t a very good sign, is it? Just because he hasn’t tried to come in  _yet_  doesn’t mean he won’t do that later. So she just stares back at him, taking in his expression of almost pained concentration.

When the staring competition has gone on for about five minutes, she lifts a hand tentatively, does an awkward little wave. He doesn’t react. Well, great. Is this gonna be like one of these movies where a girl has to tame the wild horse everyone else has given up on? She has enough wild book pages to tame before the exam period. An assassin who is sitting on her front porch sulking is not really what she bargained for.

Well, if he isn’t coming in, he can stay put out there for all she cares. She goes back to her show, but after ten minutes when she gets up to refill her mug, she can’t resist to look outside and check if he’s still here. He doesn’t appear to have moved, and it’s a rather warm night out there. He’s sitting at a spot that’s hidden from the street by their hedges. Nobody except her knows he’s here.

It should be unsettling, really. But this is the most company she’s had on a weekend in about three months. Weekends are for doing her laundry for free at her parents’ house while they’re in China, weekends are for short brunches or pub visits with the few friends that are still here in NYC. Most of them are all over the world. She shouldn’t regard him as company, but for the moment, that’s what he is. Something that makes her weekend a bit less lonesome.

Why she does what she does next – she doesn’t know. Maybe she wants to appease him so he doesn’t change his mind. (Or she has completely lost it.) But she sets an empty mug on the window sill, where it’s directly in his line of sight, and lifts a peppermint teabag and a rooibos teabag. He looks at the peppermint for about two seconds longer. If he isn’t more vocal about this, it isn’t her problem. She sets the peppermint teabag into the mug and pours the hot water over it. Then she opens the window and sets it on the outer sill.

He doesn’t move.

“Yeah, um, in case you care,” she opens the conversation. “I haven’t called the cops. Because nothing’s missing and I’m not hurt and… yeah… they’re probably not gonna be big fans of the whole…” she gestures vaguely to the left, “…unlocked door thing, you know.”

No reply. He’s still staring at her face. She grabs the mug and leans forward until he can grasp it, but he doesn’t take it, so she ungracefully slides halfway out of the window, almost dropping the cup and spilling hot tea over her hand. She’s hanging on the window by the waist now, her center of gravity balancing on the windowsill. “Damnit.” She shoots an angry glance in her odd visitor’s direction. “I’m tryna be nice. You could help me here, idiot.”

And a shift goes through him, the same expression that she saw last night when she first turned around at the sound of his falling gun. He is unmoving, but something around his upper eyelids has softened, and he’s staring at her like she just woke from a coma.

She sets the mug down on the floor and pulls herself into the house again.

He won’t break the gaze.

“So me calling you an idiot is …?” she guesses. Good or bad, she doesn't know, but it seems to have an impact on him. She’s talking too much, which she always does, regardless of whether she feels nervous or happy or angry or balanced. “Look, I curse a lot, but I guess I could quit for a few… how long do you think you’re gonna be… you, know,  _here_  ?” She gestures at the porch. “Because I’m only here on weekends. I leave tomorrow around noon. For uni. I don’t actually live here anymore, I just come back to clean and do my laundry. And eat donuts. The donuts at uni are really crappy. My names’s Caroline.”

Finally he averts his gaze and looks at the cup for a few seconds. Then he looks back at her face. The “why?” he croaks out could either be directed at her or at himself, but as scary as his raspy low voice is, as glad is she that at least he understands English.

“Well, I’ve been asking myself that for the first twelve years of my life, too, but after that I really started to like my name.” She grins at him hopefully. He doesn’t grin back, but he leans forward to pick up the cup of tea and sip at it, his eyes never leaving hers.

“If you mean why I didn’t call the cops, I just said that. If you mean the crappy donuts, god knows why, I’d like to know that myself. If you mean why the tea, I…” She shrugs. “You were just sitting there and I… needed the feeling that I was at least kind of in charge of the situation. When I get the feeling there’s an intruder in my house I always say something sassy-friendly-ish very loudly.  _‘If you want leftovers, kitchen’s this way’_  or  _‘I’m starting Return of the King now, you wanna join?’_  . Kind of… makes me less nervous, gives me an illusion I’m in control. Peppermint because you were staring at it. You’re welc–“

“Why are you talking to me?”

“Why didn’t you shoot me?” she retorts.

“Why,” he demands, louder this time, “are you talking to me?”

“Because I’m lonely as fuck.  _Jesus_  , no need to yell.” She’s glaring at him for a few seconds before grabbing her mug and taking a loud slurp. It was a bit of a sad thing to say, so she spontaneously shifts the attention back to him. “And because you’re kind of a shitty assassin, so I guess it’s also partly pity.”

His knuckles go white around his mug, and she should probably be scared, but he looks much more scared than she feels all of a sudden, so she backpedals a bit. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that. I’m terrific at jokes, as you can probably tell. I meant… if I were an assassin, I would probably also drop my gun all the time, so I think we might be soulmates.” And she grins at him again.

He takes a sip of tea and doesn’t reply.

It’s oddly calming, her standing at the window looking at his metal arm, him sitting on the porch staring at her hair and forehead. Peppermint and ginger. A merciful assassin and a college kid who’s pushing her luck.

“You ever seen Hannibal?” she says as he pulls herself up on the windowsill, leaning against the frame and facing him. “It’s really good. Actually, wait,  _you_  better not watch Hannibal. Like, until you’re retired.” A nervous laugh which he ignores. She attempts another smile, which he also ignores.

He keeps drinking and staring. She’d like to help him find what he’s looking, because there is a searching troop wandering through the air between them, dogs and flashlights and heat radar and everything he can think of, but she can see it’s not within reach… And as much as she would like to help, he’s getting frustrated. If he keeps looking with no success, he might get angry and not come back. Or he might figure it out and leave. It’s kind of sad, but she likes having him here. She is Scheherazade and she needs to keep talking.

“You don’t know how to fix a washing machine by chance, do you?” she asks. “I thought I fixed mine, but now it won’t let me set the temperature.” That part is true but she doesn’t have any illusions he’ll actually help.

Her assassin soulmate shakes his head. This conversation is going places. The movie girl usually has to visit three times before the problematic horse even acknowledges her existence. “What’s your name then?” she adds promptly, maybe a bit too forward. “You… um, you can use a fake one.”

A dejected shrug.

She can feel her eyes shining inappropriately for a second. “Should we pick one out together? Special code name for special tea buddy?”

There is a long silence.

“I tried to kill you yesterday,” he finally croaks.

She clenches her jaw defiantly. “Yeah. So? You ended up not killing me.”

When he gets to his feet, she remembers how tall he is. Shit, shit, shit ...

But she doesn’t back away from the window. The mug with his peppermint tea is still standing on the porch where he set it down, and he doesn’t pay any attention to it as he flexes his arms and back to free them from the stiffness. “You,” he says wryly as he turns towards the steps that lead him out of the garden back onto the street, “you must be really damn lonely.”

 _Did he just_  – whoa.

“I’ll see you again!” she calls after him, half upset, half amused.

He’s right, of course. She might not be.

His boots drone heavy on the wooden boards of the porch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tell me your favorite sentence(s), please! And tell me what you didn't like that much. English isn't my first language, so if I fuck up grammar, vocabulary or syntax, go easy on me.  
> (Sorry for the freight train thing.)


	2. Hallway

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (It gets a bit more angsty in this chapter. You've been warned.) Enjoy!

The smell of pancakes is seeping through the half-open front door. Cautiously he pushes it open and peeks in the hallway. Music is playing in the kitchen and the sneakers from last night are still here. So it’s neither burglars nor his supervisors. Either she’s expecting him or she forgot to close the –

A shadow darts out from behind the curtains, out of the corner of his eye and past his left flank. And there she is, shaking, with his gun in her hands as she kicks the front door closed, licking her lips nervously. Without even having to think about it, he swings his rifle over his shoulder and responds. His gun is pointed at her head. Her gun (well, technically, also his) is pointed at his chest.

“Chill for a second, I’m not gonna kill you,” she pants.

He nods at the gun, not letting his guard down. “Then what is this?”

A shrug somewhere between irony and panic. “Life insurance? The cops were here this morning. Asking me if I’d seen or heard anything.”

Right. Mr Marble Tiles next door. His orders did not include disposing of the body, so he left it. So it would be found and taken as a warning. Well. Way to go. Now  _she’s_  scared and the dead man’s associates are probably still ignoring the warning shot they’ve been given. Fucking groundbreaking success, this one.

She’s showing no signs of lowering her gun, but she’s moving her shoulders and face a lot while speaking, so her aim is probably slightly off. “I see, it might have been naïve, but I thought you were… starting out. First day, second thoughts. New kid on the block, doing his best… killing people… You know. The usual.” Sharp intake of breath. She’s shaking again. “Then the damn cops show up and tell me someone put a  _bullet_  in Mr Whitman’s brain and… yeah, now it’s me having second thoughts.”

When he squints through the milky glass tiles of the door, she shakes her head. “I didn’t… tell them anything. I was just…”

Hoping he wouldn’t come back. Understandable, really.

“You know, I keep getting myself in more and more shit with you. Someone shows up at my house with three guns and I make ‘em a cup of tea. You know what that looks like to the cops?  _Real_  sketchy. Like I know you. Like I know what you’re doing out there. I’m a pre-law, for crying out loud. I shouldn’t, you know, get mixed up in  _actual criminal activity_!”

Yet here they are, pointing guns at each other. Here they are, and she sounds like she’s complaining about an unfair grade in middle school, like she expects him to say something uplifting so she can make it through lunch break without starting to cry. It’s completely absurd.

“Know how to shoot?” he says.

Deep sigh. “My dad has friends in Idaho.”

“So?”

She gives a forced little smile, cringing in at the memory in retrospective disbelief. “So when that friend’s daughter had her Sweet Sixteen party, all the guests got to shoot with her father’s hunting rifle at clay pigeons on the fence. My first try was three out of five.”

He can’t help but ask. “Second try?”

Her jaw goes rigid in an instant. “Well, this is no hunting rifle, but I’m much closer to the mark this time, so...” And she’s defensive and angry again, lifting her jaw and tightening her fists around the gun, and he is certain something deep inside his belly has just been born out of his ribs, crying for its mother.

When she sees the already familiar vulnerability in his face, her eyebrows twitch between helplessness and understanding, and once again he can see her throw caution overboard, and choose help, and choose protection. She does not undo the safety, but she takes her left hand from the gun, destabilizing it.

“If you don’t shoot, I won’t,” she proposes.

A very old memory has burst into the room through one of the brick walls; static, faint, but loud. A much larger man holding a gun to his head saying, “If you don’t shoot, I will.” His first target. Or one of the first. He can’t remember the order exactly, only if he’s trying for days he can be close to fifty percent sure who came before whom. One gun between his fingers and one against his head. It has never left, really. The safety comes off next to his ear, click, click, click, again and again. _If you don’t shoot… I’ll count to three, soldier._

This sentence is not a promise. It’s always been a threat.

_If you don’t shoot…_

_One. Two._

“Hey. Stormy. You hear me?” Another nervous moistening of her lips, she fiddles with the gun a bit, left hand, right hand again, the left is sinking back down. Sweaty palms, most likely. He hasn’t had those in what must have been decades. Touching a gun is like touching a door handle. “That sound like an okay deal? It’s fine by me. Not dying is... one of my life goals, really.”

He winces, swallows.

“Deal? The pancakes are getting cold, and I don’t have any more eggs to make new ones.”

He could just take one step forward and she would shoot him in self-defense. It would be easy. They’d find him with two loaded guns and ammunition, in a house he shouldn’t be in, shot by a shivering young girl who luckily happens to have just enough experience with firearms to defend herself. Then again… She speaks in the exact radio frequency to be heard in that forgotten corner behind his left lung, just above his stomach, the part where it hurts when she curses or walks or falls to the ground after the slightest injury. There was someone. He is certain of that now. There was someone who did some of the things she does, and didn’t do a lot of other things that she does, but  _when_  those two people align, he feels the closest to an innocent man that he has felt in years.

But he can’t grasp it. They aren’t similar enough to remind him, or he isn’t functional enough to remember anymore. He wants to ruffle her hair just as much as he wants to blow her goddamn brains out, and he can’t tell which part is him. Deep down, he knows that it is both. And he knows it won’t be enough for her to make it. He’ll come back over and over again, and one day he’ll stay longer than he’s supposed to and she will call him a jerk as he cuts her throat.

Even if he can’t reach what he reminds him of, he can’t be the one who ends up destroying it… She catches him staring at the gun and draws it behind her back, out of his reach. “Oh hell no, I’m not doing that. Not in my fucking house. Are you out of your…” And this time, the understanding on her face is grand as a collapsing statue. She blinks several times, as if dodging debris, taking in just how deeply damaged he is. Out of his mind. “They did something to you. They… This isn’t just ‘I’ll kill your family if you don’t work for me’, is it? This is like, hardcore, manipulation and …“ She takes two deep breaths and sits down on the floor without paying any attention to his gun. Takes out her phone to check the time as if it were an automatism, puts it next to her on the floor. “Holy fucking lord, what am I going to… how am I…”

He picks it up and finds the green telephone receiver symbol.

“Stop doing that, that’s so  _rude_! What if I were looking at my own nudes or s-“

He punches in three numbers and hands it back to her, bending his knees and cowering next to her at she stares at the emergency number.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” she finally snarls, and shuts it down. At least she’s good at maintaining his trust. That part is probably life insurance as well. What else would it be? He can see the wheels turning as she desperately trying to come up with a plan for a situation nobody has ever prepared her to face. Then her eyes narrow out and she glances up at him, “How often do you … How often do they make you kill people?”

And he can feel himself shifting back into the shadow. Please do something I recognize. Stop talking badly about them, save yourself, stop, act, smile... He can’t even warn her. Warning shots were not part of his training.

She nods and sighs. “Okay then. Allowed to have your own place?”

He doubts that a cell counts, so he shakes his head.

“Do they mind when you leave?”

“Not at night.” He’s supposed to be out, getting to know the environment as well as he can, so that when there is need for pursuit during a mission, he will not have any disadvantage to the locals. Her eyes are somewhere between grey and blue and green and really not that familiar at all.

He knows twenty different lethal places to shoot her. He knows at which angle he could make it look like suicide. She mentioned she was lonely…

“Then you can come here during the weekend. And we’ll figure this out.”

She doesn’t say what they’ll figure out. He doesn’t think she has any idea. But she’s unrelenting, and she’s determined, and that alone takes him back long enough to slam the door behind the haunted house he’s being dragged through and wash off some of the blood on his lungs.

And then she cracks a big smile at him and he understands that for now, the idea of normality is all she has to offer, and maybe he doesn’t need to share his thoughts, maybe he just needs to do what he can do best: forget for a while. He extends his metal hand because his right is still clutching the rifle, and she takes it without hesitation, pulling herself up. She touched him. The prosthesis, which doesn’t always feel like it’s part of him, but still.

“Here you go.” She tucks the gun back into his pants. “Moving on to more important things. Food. Cold pancakes for dinner is alright, but not enough for two. We should order some pizza.” Another deep sigh, but a light-hearted one this time. “Shit, I bet you eat like, ten pizzas every day. Feeding you through the weekends is gonna be so damn expensive. Do you have allergies?”

He usually subsists on prison meals and whatever proteins he’s given to keep him stable, because if he’s not eating that, he’s not eating, period. He doesn’t think he’s ever had pizza. He doesn’t think he has allergies. He shrugs.

She rolls her eyes at him. “Always helpful, Seabiscuit. Thanks.”

*

Caroline doesn’t know how to distinguish cases of indoctrination from each other, and even less about reversing or treating them, but she does know a place nearby that delivers ten inch pizzas. Five for twenty dollars, and she’s going all across the menu for as much diversity as possible. Her family has been buying from Firenze’s ever since they moved here, so delivery is on the house for her.

As her mystery dinner guest is shoving onions, prosciutto and peperoni into his mouth, she tries to not freak out about the fact that there’s an assassin at her kitchen table wiping his mouth with her mother’s napkins. As an invited guest. This is awkward. She’s gotta make conversation.

“They do let you wash your hair sometimes, right?”

He stops chewing and stares up at her. Good job, Caroline.

“Sorry. How do you like dinner?”

He responds by taking another slice and ignoring her. That’s fair, so she follows his example and chews, casually twitching her leg up and down under the table. Does he like the music? She only has her mum’s music here, and Eva Cassidy isn’t that bad. Hopefully he never got beat up to Fields of Gold or something. If there’s really something about his employment that is sketchier than contract killing, she needs to watch out for triggers. Some things instantly bring him back to being her nightly tea companion, but she hasn’t quite figured out what they are. She needs to do that as quickly as possible. Build a safety net in case she accidentally does trigger him. Because if he did kill Mr Whitman, she doesn’t want to get on his bad side.

She glances up at him again, and right now he’s just a young man shoving pizza in his face and silently being amazed by the taste. God, it’s like he never had a damn pizza before. What on earth do they feed him?

Her favorite is roasted peppers, garlic and shrimps. His favorite seems to be olive and mushrooms, which she’s really happy about because she hates mushrooms. The song ends and she starts pushing her agenda of diversion again, through the olive oil and rich, delightful tomato sauce. “I’m just saying, why a middle part? Hair always looks more greasy with a middle part, and I have experience. I basically gotta shower every ten minutes. Oops, it’s eight pm already? Too bad, I missed twenty-seven showers.”

He’s trying Hawaii now. Clearly not his favorite, and when he looks up, she defensively lifts her hands. “Okay, I’m biased because  _I_  don’t look good with a middle part. Just saying. You could actually  _try_  shit when you’re… off work.”

For a second, she wonders if she has made a grave mistake by mentioning work, but then, without dropping his pokerface, he runs his hand through his hair without wiping it clean first, sweeping a large portion of his hair to the left. She nearly snorts tomato sauce out of her nose.

“Oh, come on, ew. No, put it back. I stand defeated. Middle part it is. You look splendid, okay – DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH THE PIZZA!”

He startles a bit at her scream, and she clutches her hands over her mouth immediately, but then he just shakes her head and resumes eating. The light atmosphere lasted about two seconds, and she could punch herself in the face, really, for being so goddamn loud. Bashfully, she spreads applesauce and sugar on a pancake and rolls it. They’re eating in silence for the next ten minutes. It’s almost enough to just eat with someone. Almost. If it were a peaceful silence, not one full of wrong choices. She doesn’t know why she feels like she’s in the wrong all the time. He’s the one who pointed a gun at her. Well, after today, he’s not alone in that. She did aim at him. But she was afraid that he had returned to kill her. The CD has finished. He was also afraid. There are people who kill because they enjoy it, but he seems very far from that. Half the time he seems terrified, the other half he seems synthetic. Someone has taken this person and destroyed him up to the point where he destroys others without second thought. Except for her. Well, not her specifically, but…

“Who do I remind you of?”

He doesn’t meet her gaze, but he stops chewing. Oh god. They’re probably dead, right. They are so dead, and she is crossing lines. She has no right to ask about them. Maybe it’s his wife. Or his child. She suspects it’s someone who is very likely not in his life anymore. Either way, she is lucky they exist at all, and resemble her enough to make him reconsider hurting her. If only he would initiate a conversation now and then, she wouldn’t keep fucking this up. Then again, this isn’t really his fault. She just has no idea what’s appropriate for them to talk about. You can’t talk about the weather with someone whose wellbeing you chose over telling the police the truth.

“Sorry. Again. I’ll be saying that a lot.”

He shrugs and shakes his head. “S’okay. Not for that.”

“So are you gonna tell me you love it or do I have to, like,  _cook_  from now on?”

Another head shake.

“Thank God.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stormy is the horse from Virginia's Run, which is a horse movie I saw when I was ten. Seabiscuit is another horse whose name I got from a list of horse movies. I've never actually seen that one, but I'm all for ridiculous nicknames. And yes, the friend in Idaho actually exists.
> 
> Again, I'd love to hear your opinion and your favorite parts - funniest, saddest, you name it. Bring it on!
> 
> The next chapters will hopefully be a bit more light-hearted.


	3. 475

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some allusions to electric shocks in here, and very questionable methods of making people run faster. If that bothers you, skip the first section.

This is his Wednesday: first of all, he isn’t even sure it is Wednesday. Weeks and days have always blurred into each other. There’s been a rupture, recently, but not one large enough to spill over into the present. He knows he was supposed to be somewhere important last weekend, but through the haze of waking up and shaking off whatever they put into his food, it is hard to remember. If it is still important, he will be told.

 _Three, two, one, go._  He stands up. He wipes his eyes.

They are still arranging convenient circumstances to eliminate his next target. In the meantime, he has to be kept in shape and prepared for smaller missions that might come up unexpectedly.

Training. Therapy. Back to his cell. And then, he’ll wait and sit until he is needed. They place training before therapy so he will be exhausted by the time they test the stamina of his screams. He wants to add,  _as usual_ , but is that true? Is training usually before therapy? Running draws the last breath from him, one he hadn’t noticed he was saving. After the compulsory extra lap, and the one he has to complete with men shooting at his feet, and the one where they set the dogs on him, he is almost relieved at the familiarity. It is easy to remember. It is easy to know what to do.

Then they drag him to the armchair.

He doesn’t always get shocked, that’s the whole point. If they used electricity on him each day of training, it’d be too great a hassle to make sure no damage comes to his vital organs. But he knows the chair will hurt one out of ten times, so he stays still ten out of ten and pleads silently.  _Next week. Please. Next week._  The chair is sizzling silently as he is thrown into the construction. He chokes on something and realizes his breath has turned its back once more.

One. The machines are booting up much louder than would be necessary. He’s shifting back and forth. There’s no way he can tell. He never can.

Two. A sturdy middle-aged man takes a seat across from him and begins a familiar inquiry about his allegiance. The words hurry out of his mouth and trip over each other, like a hungry people jostling in front of the food counter. “I will free bring… I will… new freedom to the world –“ He messed it up. He said the right words, but they were mechanical. He blinks, swallows, tries again. A sour, discontent face. A high-pitched whirring noise behind his neck and ...

Silence.

Three. There is no shock this week.

Existing is hazy and agonizing. Everyone in here is armed.

Swallow. Pant. Swallow. “I… I will bring freedom to the new world we are building. I will help it change for the better.”

He is tired. He is so terribly tired.

 

*

 

This is her Wednesday: She skips breakfast to stay in bed for ten minutes longer. It also gives her an excuse to buy blueberry muffins at the corner store just next to the student dorm on her way out. She has four classes today, all so well-distributed she’ll be up and busy from seven to seven, but won’t have enough time between lectures to go home or study effectively.

The first half of her breakfast she absent-mindedly shoves down her throat while striding down the hallway, the other she rolls into a napkin and hopes it won’t get crushed by her textbooks. She has plans for tonight after class, and she hopes she’ll find what she’s looking for.

One. The library is terribly full already and she can’t find a spot, so she eats her second muffin outside. Scrolls down her instagram feed, posts an old selfie with her sister and captions it with a single heart.

Two. She has lunch. She has only twenty minutes to sit and eat because of the long queue; no time to even check in on the books that might help her later. A few classmates say hi as they walk past her table to clean up their trays, and she says hi back through a mouthful of peas, and smiles.

Three. Her professor announces the topic for the weekly essay. As usual, he’ll only collect ten out of a hundred, but it’s an effective method to get the maximum of students working with the minimum effort. Her last essay went alright, but this time it’s complicated. After class is over, she starts working on it a bit, but her thoughts trail off every other sentence. She’ll just have to hope he picks someone else next week.  _For the love of God, anyone but me._

Four. Finally. She plugs her earphones in while shuffling to the library with tired feet. God damn, that was another long day of doing essentially nothing. How to kill a day in four steps… Well, it’s just the usual treadmill. Maybe if research goes well and her feet stop aching, she’ll even go running tonight.

The woman at the counter only knows her from checking out this or that law book in her rare phases of “from now on, I shall get my shit together once and for all”. When she was a child, she thought that every librarian wore soft wool wests and young, loving smiles and a full heart on her sleeve. Mrs. Turner is around sixty and Caroline has never seen her wear anything knitted in her life, let alone anything that could be mistaken for a smile.

Mrs. Turner is a no-nonsense kind of woman, and she loves to have order in her little kingdom. In her freshman year, she saw a classmate getting yelled at for sorting a b109:17 book under b109:71. She needs to be on top of her shit now if she wants a helpful answer from her.

“If there was, um, theoretically,” Caroline begins, and already wants to punch herself in the face. “Actually, this is for a case study. Sort of a law school psychology cooperation… project. If there was somebody who had killed under orders, and was now, you know, a bit…”

She doesn’t want to say broken.

She doesn’t want to say traumatized.

Something has happened to him, but she is sure that there is no word yet invented for it. She saw his face, in the hallway, as he understood that she was beginning to understand. He didn't come last weekend. They had pizza, he left without eating the pancakes, and she hasn't seen him since. What if something happened? She can't wait around for this. She needs to be prepared when he comes back. If he comes back.

“I had a brother,” Mrs. Turner says, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “I had a brother in the military. You don’t need to bring your bad excuses. Where’s he live, NYC?”

“What? Who?”

“Or she, whoever it is. I can’t recommend you any books, but I know some therapists…”

“No!”

Mrs. Turner looks up, and Caroline hastily clears her throat.

“I don’t think he’s quite ready for, you know. Talking to an… outsider. Or. You know.”

She desperately hopes that Mrs. Turner knows, because she sure as hell doesn’t. She has no idea why she is even doing this. What is she hoping to gain from it? Someone who understands her nightly tea guest? Someone who can help him? Someone who can help her?

Because clearly, she does need help. She has repeatedly invited a killer into her house.

And made him tea and dinner.

If she had any damn friends in this godforsaken town, if anyone bothered to fucking talk to her beyond greetings in passing, if her parents had not moved and her social skills weren’t so terrible, then maybe, just maybe, she would not be wasting her breath on this.

She would be having a strawberry mojito with some people from her constitutional law class, and Whitman’s murderer –  _murderer_  – would be in prison. In the psych ward, while his boss would torture the next unfortunate man into being his straw puppet.

“Just take it, alright?” says Mrs Turner, who is clearly as uncomfortable as Caroline is about her wet cheeks and her balled fists on the table. She reaches for the buzzing printer, and then pushes a folded sheet of paper towards her. “Just see which ones work best for him. They really helped Scott, and he was very skeptical in the beginning. He counsels one of the classes now. They also have a website, if you want to send them a mail first.”

She takes the sheet of paper, mumbles a short thank you, and then sits outside under a street name, unfolding it. It’s a list of cities, and names, and addresses.

_VETERANS WITH PTSD._

She supposes one could call it that. Not that she has experience with trauma. These people do. But how can she be sure that they won’t harm him? How can she be sure that he won’t harm them? And how would she even ask him? How would they go there?

In his mask, with his leather straps and his guns and his metal arm? The FBI would lock the place down before they’d even have the chance to get him help.

_Brooklyn, New York City, New York. Counselor H.J. Peterson / Counselor A.P. Miller._

She looks further through the list, searching for Mrs. Turner’s brother.

_Trenton, New Jersey. Counselor S.L. Newman._

S for Scott? That could be him… There are so many names on the list.

_Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Counselor S.O. Micheals._

_Washington, D.C. Counselor S.T. Wilson._

None of them are even close to the solution. This is not getting her anywhere.

 

*

 

His next appointment is six hours away. They drop him off a few streets away from the hotel after the sun goes down. A laundry service at the intersection, and the neon lights of a loud club. Looks like every other street around here. Keeping in the shadows, he watches the neon sign’s letters. “MARATHON” they spell out, all blinking alternately, giving him a headache. There is a jagged edge behind his vision, and he pulls on it. A broken neon light comes loose. An illuminated word with one dark letter. An R.

Then again, neon lights, laundry service, intersection. Every other street in New York, just like he said. He stares west, trying to judge the time by the darkness of the visible horizon line.

Then east, towards the towering hotel. He’s in Room 682. Every night at three, he walks out to the brothel. He always takes the back alleys, because his wife is watching him from the windows, and she knows that he is up to something. Well. She won’t have to watch anymore after tonight.

He looks back at the neon sign, now steadily illuminated. MA  ATHON.

Of course. Another target, over three months ago, lived just one block down.

How odd, he thinks, that he remembers this now.

 

*

 

She goes back home. Well. She goes back to the single bed dorm room that she shares with a half dozen spiders and the ghostly flickering of the neon lamp above her bathroom mirror. Her best friends are in different time zones, they won’t have stayed up until four am. Skyping is out of the question. A cup of tea, maybe reread A Series of Unfortunate Events… What goes best with the Austere Academy? Ginger? Something minty? She opens her nightstand drawer while absent-mindedly contorting out of her bra. Her mother sent her some really nice chamomile and honey, maybe it’s time to finally try …

It’s in Brooklyn. In her lonely little dorm room she has matcha green tea, and lemon ginger, and some red fruit nonsense in crumb form that she guilt-eats during exam phases, when she needs sugar at three in the morning.

It looks like cat litter. If sugar could expire, it would taste like this.

It’s not like she could not go and get her chamomile tea. She won’t be disturbed, because  _he_  knows she is only home on weekends. And he doesn't even come by on the weekends, so what are the odds? Even better. Less mugs to wash up. Maybe she will still drive by the veteran support group. Look at the building. Have something to do.

She could leave now. Theoretically. The car is out in the parking lot, two hours of driving and singing along to seventies playlists absolutely sounds like a good time, and Thursday classes are nothing but dry repetitions of material she’s already taken last year. She could skip tomorrow. She could afford it. Not like it’d become a habit.

She could. But she won’t.

 

*

 

He can’t. There is not one gun they have put into his hands that he hasn’t figured out in less than three minutes. But this stove is where he draws the line. How does the heat turn on? How does it go higher? He does have a few days to figure it out before she comes back, but it might be better if he does not destroy any of her kitchen appliances in the meantime.

Finally, he turns the faucet all the way to the hottest setting, and lets the warm water flow over the teabag. It does not even taste like tea. Just like a dirty hot puddle with a bit of cough syrup.

At midnight, after his fifth cup of tea, he still does not feel better, but he can hear the door open in the hallway, and she stumbles in, cheeks reddened, with her car keys in one hand and a sweet-smelling white plastic bag in the other. Her little feet shuffling over the floor bring him back to clarity, and it’s nothing like the neon sign. This kind of awakening hurts while he is being pulled through the tunnel. This kind of awakening reminds him of more than he wants to remember.

"Hi, jerk. Was worried sick when you didn't show last week, but nevermind. Just me, right?"

He can’t go to the hotel tonight. But if he doesn’t, then they’ll know, won’t they? They wiped him. They prepared him. And he managed to break out. They will know, and surveillance will tighten. He cannot let that happen. He has to face this man while he has a conscience.

Is he relieved? Is he scared? He doesn’t know. He’s just taken aback by the amount of emotions that he has. This is only the fourth time that he meets her. What is this? Overcompensation? He doesn’t… He can’t…

Oddly enough, she does not seem surprised to see him at all.

“Did you eat? I brought Chinese,” she says, and she looks as guilty as he feels, rambling on as she turns her face away, toeing out of her shoes. Why is she so embarrassed? It is her house. She should be allowed to come here unexpectedly.

“For, uh. Two. Would have eaten the other portion for, you know, lunch. Didn’t actually think you’d… So. What’s up?” She freezes for a second, and the nonchalant frown, short as a firefly glow, is a doomed attempt to hide her anxiety. “Oh God, is this the part where you wait for me in my house and kill me because I know too much? Cause if you are, uh, go ahead.” She scratches her head, shrugs, then wanders into the kitchen. “No, feel free. Really. But let me at least get some of this sweet and sour vegetable nonsense into my system first. Okay? If the cops find me with an empty stomach, my mother will never find peace for the rest of her life.”

She should be more scared of him. She should be. He doesn’t  _understand_.

“You had a bad day, too?” Every time she makes a half-hearted attempt at normalcy with her clearly understated small talk, two conflicting urges arise in his throat. One is despair. That one he recognizes. The other one is less familiar. Push it away. It could be rage.

Not  _their_  rage, but his.

Something in him has been angry for as long as he has been alive, and he does not want her to be the one to see it when it first emerges. Not her. Not the first person who treats him like …

“So are you eating or are you not eating?”

He has two hours before his next target. He supposes he can spare one.

She goes on and on about her boring classes while she makes tea. The buttons that control the cooking fields are touch-sensitive. Plus. Minus. Of course they are not reactive to his metal hand. Or the leather glove he wears on his organic one.

Her hands are human. Soft. He could snap them in half without having to catch a breath. He has to tell her. He has to tell her what kind of person he is. But she has such nice, small hands. He almost feels like he has kept a secret from them before.

There is no revelation. There is no confession. There is just this state of impossibility, of cautiously and shamefully watching her while she babbles on about this and that.

It’s only after they’ve finished eating that she leans forward and looks him straight in the eye. “I will go to the police with you. If you want. NYPD. FBI. Whatever.”

His left hand is grasping his spoon tighter.

She sounds dead serious, and he’s not used to this tone in her voice. He knows it though. Why does he know it? “Whitman is dead, and there’s nothing we can do about that now. But I can tell them that you spared me. You can tell them what your boss did to you.”

His heart is beating so fast that his lungs can barely catch up. Chamomile tea looks like urine in this beige cup. They all wet themselves after he shoots them. The bladder releasing its content. Natural human reflex. He wonders if his body would be capable of those, if he were to get shot. He cannot look at her.

“Granted, I’m not much of a lawyer yet.” Her fork clinks on her parents’ china as she sets it down and wipes her mouth clean. He is eating dinner with a witness in her kitchen. He has a gun on his hip. What is he doing? “I’m sure you’d get a milder sentence than you think… I mean... Whitman was probably not your first, realistically speaking, but whatever you did…“

She leaves the sentence unfinished.

They have men everywhere. They know that he is here, don’t they? They will kill her when he leaves, and then they will scrub him down two layers of skin, until he doesn’t remember how to read. He should do it now. Kill them both. Be quick. Be merciful.

“Four hundred seventy five,” he interrupts, and his voice is no more than a whisper.

She puts down her napkin. “What?”

“That’s all of them,” he repeats, and his voice is toneless, “I think. Four hundred seventy five.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea how many people Bucky actually killed as the Winter Soldier. Did some research, came up with nothing and made up this number. He was active for fifty years on and off, I'd say there were at least about ten per year.
> 
> What was your favorite part or your favorite sentence?
> 
> Was the little cameo to obvious?
> 
> Let me know what you think!


	4. Button-Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even know what happened. Two chapters in two days after not posting for six months. The power of cliff-hangers, I guess.
> 
> Not that I think anyone expected sunshine and rainbows after how i left things off after chapter three, but this is consistent with the shift in the last chapter. It's a lot of angst, and everyone involved is just a plain old mess, but I promise it will get a bit more light-hearted in the next one. That's why we're all here, after all. Whoo!
> 
> I've drafted the rest of the fanfiction at about fifteen chapters. Let's see if that turns out to be accurate.

She stays.

She says nothing. She goes into the kitchen to put the plates in the washing machine, and they clatter against each other, as if her hands are shaking. Then she comes back. She watches him for a bit, and he watches back. Any minute, she will run, and she will file a report, and she will be doomed. Now.  _Three, two, one._ Now.

“If you’re taking the piss,” she finally says. “You should know that this is not fucking funny.”

“I’m not.”

“Good. I mean, not  _good_ , but… good god.”

Neither of them speaks for a bit.

“Which one was Whitman?”

Her hands are restless on the table, but her gaze is firm and her voice is steady. She will be an extraordinary person one day. She is scared for her life, and it’s visible, but she is pushing through. He has not seen many people who can do that.

“Four hundred sixty eight. I think.”

“You think?”

“Blurry spot. Last weekend. ‘m not sure if there were more. What happened right before wiping, that’s always the hardest to remember.” He has never spoke this much for as long as he can remember, let alone to somebody other than his guards.

“What is wiping? What do they…”

Why is she this angry, when she has no idea what this feels like? He laughs a bit, a raspy foreign sound. “Can’t remember. That’s the whole point of it.”

“They take your  _memories_? Fuck, I knew that they were fucking you up, but I thought, you know, that they’d killed your family, or they were holding them hostage, or they cut off your arm, but… How far back does this go? I mean, what do you forg… Ugh, that makes no sense. Sorry. What do you remember? I mean, you say the time before wiping… Days? Weeks?”

The tea in his cup looks like tea again, but it’s too late now.

He recognizes the face that she makes whenever she adds another puzzle piece to his truth. The pain, the astonishment, the disbelief, the pity. He hates seeing this face. He craves it.

“Look at me, please. Back when… when I asked what your name was…”

He stands up, and she curses quietly.

It’s time for him to end this. He’ll forget her sooner or later, he is predisposed to. He might wander to this house again once in a while, but he’ll remember in time that he is not supposed to go in. It was nice. The tea. The company. The jokes, which make him worry in retrospect.

The door handle is loose. He’ll forget that too.

He has almost left the room when she calls after him. “I’ll help you.”

“Help me?” He sounds almost disdainful. He sounds like  _them_. Wincing, he turns his face away from the door and looks at her.

“Help you remember,” she murmurs, patting the table with her hands as she waits for his response. “If you want to. I guess I’m correct in assuming that you’ve also forgotten the person I remind you of. They might be wondering about you are just like you’re wondering about them.”

He should leave. He should leave right now. The unnamed feeling is announcing itself again. He can’t lose his temper now and prove everyone right.

“I know that you want to know where they are. I know that… that you’re scared to.”

He grasps the door handle tighter.

“I’d like to meet them, too. Your ghost. Thank them. For helping me survive.”

Maybe he can try. For her. He told her that he killed hundreds of people, and she wants to help him. This is something he will never be able to forget, no matter how much he wants to. He does not hold out any hopes that his… his person, his ghost…

His life only leaves room for one conclusion: Caroline is a desperate attempt at atonement, and his ghost is a haunting that he brought on himself. Without even remembering it – that is the most painful part. He was the one that killed his ghost.

But he has not killed her. He spared her, she spared him. They should have had that pizza, and then never spoken to one another again. But she helped. She gave him a safe house. Surely she deserves something in return. After tonight. After he does what he needs to, and makes it back in time before the sun rises.

“I’ll be back,” he croaks out.

 

*

 

It’s Thursday, and she has planned to leave at around two pm, right after lunch.

But she has no classes after five today, so she might as well stay until sundown, just in case he comes by, and drive back at eight. It doesn’t matter if she arrives at four or at ten, does it? She’ll be back in time for tomorrow. She just has to remember to ask a classmate if she can borrow their notes from the Thursday lecture. Chances are, the one time that she does miss class, they actually move past the repetition phase. She picks up her phone and sees a text from her mother.

 **“Hello, sweetie! How was your week so far? :)**   **We miss you!”**

Oh, dear. A smiley. Her mother must really miss her. What the hell does she say to that? The truth? What even is that? How  _was_  her week?  **“Befriending serial killers and contemplating to take methamphetamines,”** she types, just to laugh at the absurdity.  **“Miss you too!”**

Sighing, she ruffles her hair and presses the delete button. The message swoops upwards to the conversation field and pings. Marked as sent.  _Fuck._

As she scrambles to draft an explanation, her mum sends back a laughing smiley.

 **“Ha, ha! Don’t blame me for being a silly old mother hen. I’m proud that my big girl is getting along so well! Don’t stay up too late! :)**   **Maybe I can call on Saturday!”**

Well. Whether it is taken seriously or not, this is what she could have done all along instead of downplaying everything and pretending that she’s “stressed with her essays”. Tell the truth. But if she had wanted to be honest, she would have gone about it differently. Not like this. Two weeks ago, she could have written,  **“Hi, mum. New York is sunny, how is your weather? I read on the news the air is quite clean right now. Everyone at university is either obsessed with impressing the professor or with landing a hookup with the drunk basketball player at the frat party. My friends have their own lives at their own universities and I’m so lonely that sometimes I just want to put my head in the toilet and scream for six hours. Please come back. I hate that you’re in China, and I feel like a child.”**

Is that still true? It doesn’t feel quite accurate at the moment.

He makes her lock the door and invents knocking signs by which she can identify him. She buys green olives at the Greek Deli and keeps them in the fridge for him. He lifts the furniture when she loses her earrings. They sit around quietly, and he doesn’t expect her to be happy or balanced or productive. His company distracts her from her own misery.

It’s easy to forget that none of this is actually about her. It’s about the ghost.

But she’ll take it for now. Better than no company at all.

 

*

 

He’s late on Friday, he only dropped in briefly yesterday and she probably assumed that he isn’t coming today. Although she did tell him that she would be here if he needed her, he did not think that she would really stay.

But here she is, under the blankets on the couch, cuddled up to the space heater, her jeans a crumpled blue heap on the floor. Before he can say something to announce himself or knock on the door frame, she throws the blankets back, uncoordinatedly tonguing a gummy worm into her mouth and taking off her pullover. She is wearing something underneath that looks like a loose undershirt, and it shifts with the movement.

Her upper body is sturdy and upright, and a good size for her build. But she is so small. He has never realized how much of a small person she is. As she stretches, he can see her little tummy pouch inverting, the hollow back and the ribcage cliff building something he wants to smother, something he wants to sing lullabies to. He makes an odd sound, and she turns to him, chin pulled taut. But it’s him, and when she sees him step forward into the light, she relaxes.

Her body looks less breakable now that she has breathed out.

“What?” she says, and it sounds like a challenge.

He points in the vague direction of her body. “Ribs.”

She goes bright red in the face. “I… Look, it’s not that bad. It’s only when I stretch that you can see them like this. I’m fine, really. You act like my grandma.”

The ghost. The ghost had a ribcage like this. One that looked like a bombed building when they sucked in their breath too far.

He has seen them sleep. He has seen them stretch. He has seen them take off a pullover.

“We lived together,” he says. It’s been long since he thought out loud. He wonders if he did it around them. “The ghost and I. We lived together.”

“Oh,” says Caroline, who seems relieved. “Oh. You remembered their stature?”

He shrugs, sits down next to her. The sofa is full of gummy worms and an empty plate sits on the ground, caked in tomato sauce. She is watching a detective show. Some fat little man is looking through a case file at a desk, discussing with an assistant. He has a round face. Looks quiet, but sure of himself. Nothing like his ghost.

Caroline pushes her blanket to the side to make more room for him. “Describe them.”

This is her newest obsession, and he hates it. Getting him to talk. She think it’s helping him with his thought process. It is. But it still takes effort. Sometime more than he can spare.

“Sometimes, you look exactly like that. And sometimes you don’t. Don’t know.”

“Does it have to do with clothes?”

“All clothes look wrong on you. But different kinds of wrong. And the undershirt was also wrong. But not where the skin was.” It’s so hard to make his thoughts sound sensible and rational and connected to one another. She nods slowly.

He turns his face away, and it lands on the television again. The fat detective is now in a car with a man in a black suit and glasses. They’re fighting about something trivial.

“It’s settled.” Caroline turns the TV off and walks over to another appliance. He’s seen these before. They’re for music. She puts on something on that he doesn’t recognize; a beat, a guitar, something loud but muted. She starts humming along to it as she hurries up the stairs. He taps his foot. Eats a gummy worm. Stares at his watch, debating to leave.

Ten minutes later, she is back with a large basket, dumping clothes onto the floor. “Part one of my as-of-yet two step program. Post Retrograde Official Ghost Roommate Activation of Memories. Or, if we’re being snazzy: PROGRAM. I show you two similar pieces of clothing, you pick the one that is worse and we’ll work our way from there. We’re finding your ghost, I promise.” She is shaking her shoulders with a bright smile, tearing through the small mountain of clothes to her feet, evidently very proud of herself. “Uh-hu! Who you gonna call?!”

“I don’t,” he says cautiously, “I don’t think we should call anybody.”

 

*

 

By the end of her impromptu fashion show, she has figured out that some clothes look wrong on her in a way he doesn’t quite know how to name. Others lead to discoveries.

Flat, muted colours are good, bright colours find rejection. Blue is good, and white, and green, and grey, and beige. There is a white button-up that she wore to her interview at the university. This one seems closest to what he is looking for. So close that he nearly tears up, because he can’t tell her what’s wrong with it. He is looking for words, and she doesn’t know whether to help or whether to let him have this moment without interfering. Finally he looks up at her face, desperately, and she clears her throat. “The collar?” she says.

He shrugs helplessly.

“Something else then. Is it too white? Should the color be, I don’t know… warmer?”

No response. His forehead is wrinkled, trying to remember, and his knuckles have gone white.

“Okay. Uh. Something else. The material?”

But that doesn’t seem to be it, either.

“Something else. The buttons? Their, uh… color? Number of buttons? Their size?”

She really wants to give him some rest, but his expectant face pushes her to continue. Will this help him at all? White button-downs have been worn for decades by all sorts of people, this does not exactly give any objective hints. But maybe it can invoke a feeling. A memory. Something.

“Uh, something else. The sleeves. Should I maybe… push them up a bit? So that they look shorter? Was it a short-sleeve shirt?”

“No, not the sleeves, it’s the…” He makes a square gesture towards her torso.

“Oh! The size. Longer? Looser?”

“No, I…” He genuinely starts crying at this point.

She kneels in front of the sofa where he sits, and hugs him as tightly as she can. He does not move his arms, he just cries onto her neck and buries the bridge of his nose in her collarbone.

“It’s okay,” she whispers. “Something else. That’s something. You did great. I’m sorry.”

He leaves shortly after that, playing with the safety of his pistol as he strides off into the night. She takes her clothes back upstairs one by one. The button-up is the last to wander back into the closet. She stares at it, falling flat from the hanger, and suddenly she has an idea. Of course. She should have thought of this much earlier. It was the first goddamn question she should have asked. But maybe asking is less effective than invoking a memory.

The internet informs her that good models don’t come cheap, but it’s only for a day anyways. She finds what she needs on amazon. Nineteen ninety-nine. Delivery: Sunday, four pm.

It is a slim chance, to gamble this way. He might forget all about her once he finds his ghost. He might not care at all that she tries this hard. He might find it repellent. He might find it insufficent. She’s not sure which one would be worse, or which one would be more likely. She clicks “ _Check Out_ ” anyway. It’s time for phase two.

 

*

 

She is energetic on Saturday, in a T-shirt and jeans instead of her usual sweats and graphic tees. Running up and down the stairs throwing arbitrary objects into her bag. Tying her blonde hair into a messy bun as she downs a cup of coffee. He has never seen her have coffee before.

“How long do we have?” she calls from upstairs.

“Two hours,” he says just quietly enough to doubt whether she heard him.

She comes downstairs in a flannel shirt, green and blue and brown and white, looking well-rested and determined. “We will figure it out. I will take you to the store, and you can look at the furniture, and that might remind you of your apartment, and the ghost.”

He waits for a few seconds so that she reveals her joke, but apparently she is serious. His voice is small under the high ceilings. “But you  _know_...! I could… I could fall back into… you know.  _That_.”

“Not with me. You’ve never been dangerous around me, and I won’t leave your side for a second. We don’t have to go if you absolutely hate the idea. I don’t even know if it will help you. But I promise it will be fun. And I will buy almost nothing. Maybe almost nothing and a flowerpot and a lamp, we’ll see how it goes.” She has resolutely crossed her arms and is grinning at him. It’s the first time she has smiled at him like this since he told her the body count he carries on his shoulders. “I mean it. When you need to pee, I’ll come into the stall with you and hand you the toilet paper, that’s how committed I am.”

“What if they see me?” he says. “I can’t remember all of their faces. They could see me and I would not even know.” This won’t work. Doesn’t she know this won’t work? They can’t go out in public as if he were normal. He does not function like this anymore.

But she only stares at him for a second, then breaks out into laughter.

“Oh, you’re not going dressed like that. You look like a parachutist who went to a kinky leather bar. IKEA is a family store, for fuck’s sake. Try to dress like a respectable assassin.”

She is waving him over to the stairs and he follows her up to the second level of the house.

“You’ll wear my Dad’s gym clothes,” she informs him, leading the way to the master bedroom. “I was thinking, gloves over your hands. It’s April, the weather is having some puberty issues, so nobody will bat an eye, we just need to give you a scarf as well so it really looks like you’re cold.” He watches as she goes through the drawers. She speaks casually, as if she was doing this every day, but once again, her hands betray her. Clothes are being handed to him. A black sweatshirt. A dark green parka. A pair of jeans. Gloves. A belt. He gets changes of underwear, but he’s never worn any clothes but the ones he is wearing now.

Caroline mistakes his rattled expression for skepticism. “We can’t stay long anyways. It’s six now, you have to leave for Harlem at eight. It’s not the greatest disguise, I know, but you’ll look different, so that’s something. You should wear my dad’s prescription glasses. And a hipster bun. You’ll blend right in. And smile a lot, that will definitely throw them off.”

He stares at her. Can’t she see that he wants to cry?

“I’ll let you change,” she says softly. “I’ll wait downstairs, just yell if you need anything.”

He’s going out into the public with her. At her initiative. At her proposal.

Improbable and impossible are not the same thing. They  _could_  be seen. She doesn’t know anything about the people he works for, and she stands no chance. And even if the disguise works on the others, it is not guaranteed it will work on him.

He knows who he is. And he could remember it.

“Please, just try it on. You can make up your mind after that. I just want you to get out of that skin for a bit.” She’s smiling again. Warmer this time. “If all else fails, I’ve watched five seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Maxi dresses are in this season, you won’t even have to shave your legs.”

“Why aren't you scared?” he blurts out.

It’s the same question he asked her the first night. She cannot be this lonesome. She cannot be this hopeful that he can actually be helped.

“I am,” she laughs. “Oh God, I'm really fucking scared, you have no idea. But if anything can stabilize you, it's the ghost. And if anything can reassure me, it's you being stable. We both seem to be scared of a lot of shit. Think it'd help if we'd stop being scared of each other. We both have a lot to lose.”

“Is that why you let me in?”

She chips away a bit of the polish on the frame. “I don’t do anything by halves. I made a choice when I gave you that cup of tea. An irrational choice, and none I’d categorically recommend, but it played out okay. And I’ve gotten used to this. So we can either stay in here and cry because I could rat you out or you could snap my spine... Or we can have some fun while we're scared. IKEA. Bad rapping in the car. That stuff. Okay?”

Nothing about this is okay. “Okay,” he says.

He changes his clothes, ties his hair out of his face. Her father’s old glasses look odd on him, but the prescription is weak and it won’t bring him more than a little headache. He will go. He will try. If it goes awry, at least he won’t have to spend any more time waiting for the disaster.

She affectionately calls him a jerk as they pull out of the drive, and makes fun of him for taking so long. It actually does help him to calm down. As long as she is there, he is safe. As long is she is there, everyone else will be, too. After she has parked the car and grabbed her bag from the back seat, she catches him watching the other late-night shoppers loading their purchases into their cars. A family of five is carrying a large brown package to a silver van.

He left the guns at home, but he can do plenty of damage without them.

“Hey,” she says, and he looks over. “I’ll be there till the end of the night.”

A white button-up sentence. It lands just two vertebrae away from his throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, comments are most welcome! I love hearing what you think about this project.
> 
> What were your favorite sentences / favorite parts? Feelings, thoughts, criticism? Theories on what Bucky will experience at IKEA? What do you think Caroline ordered online?


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